I actually never used the shield. I feel the elixir gun is really good for support. The normal shot does a bleed and other debuffs. The 2nd shot does a slow and buffs and you have the last healing aoe.

I personally used rifle/elixir/bomb/grenade and was prepared for every situation with a 30/0/30/20/0 spec for dungeons/fractals. I tried doing an elixir build much but throwing elixirs the whole time was not as fun as the elixir gun.

Pro is five years old. Karmajay has won it thrice, including back-to-back as of today. Does that qualify as a dynasty? -- Grumpicus

I love kit refinement with the elixir gun. That coupled with elixir-infused bombs made for some good support. I have never tried anything like a turret build. Even with the boosts from the Invention trait line I found them to be lackluster. They die quickly - in boss fights don't even bother - and they have no resistance to aoe, which in my mind makes them nigh-useless.

I am thinking of dropping out of Invention and going deeper into Tools and Alchemy. Not a fan of tossing elixirs all day though.

I am having hell figuring out my Mesmer. I'm level 11 or 12 and I have tried Staff, Sword, GS, Torch, Focus, Scepter, PvE and WvW(I know, level 12, yaya. I was 10 when I started, so hush! ) and I am just having a hard time finding the zone.

I also have no idea what to aim for Trait wise. Am I a power class? Conditions? Do I have low toughness or low vitality? Both?

I'm not really dying a lot, but things are just not nearly as simple or smooth as it was on my warrior.
Warrior... weapon? Who cares? Whatcha got in your bag? What dropped recently that has the highest damage number? Great, use that. Keep a warhorn in your bag for running around, but just fight with whatever has the biggest numbers on it. Doesn't matter. Smash stuff. Smash more stuff. Ooh, bigger number weapon, drop old weapon, smash bigger stuff. Smash more bigger stuff.

Just. So. Easy.

Mesmer? Not so much.
The forums have quite a lack of good information for levelling. Lots of "oh, just craft your way to 40 where it gets good" and "just use a shatter build" and "go play something else if you don't like it".
I see a lot more thoughtful guides, explaining how things work, what trait lines work well with what weapons and goals, and what to level with vs when to stop using the levelling build(all signets and Axe or GS) from the Warriors and Guardians than the other classes. Both those subforums have extensive, long guides detailing things like what each weapon's use is, conceptually, how it stacks up against other weapons, what sort of utility it gives, etc(Warrior weapon guide sticky) or the Massive guardian thread detailing all there is to know about guardians, their mechanics, utilities, weapons, etc.

Where do I find similar info on Mesmers? Not the first several pages of the Mesmer forum, that's for sure.

Steam: duckilama Battletag: DuckiLama#1806T.Rex is more impressive than a cockroach, but that doesn't mean it aged better. - CheezePavillion

Well.... warriors and guardians are dime-a-dozen, so it's not a surprise that there is more information on them - everyone seems to have at least one! Mesmers are one of the rarer classes out there.

Since you're only level 12, there's not a lot of focused advice that I can really give you. I recommend equipping a greatsword and a staff, and using both in battle. An attack plan goes something like this:

- Lead with greatsword #4 (berserker)
- Follow up immediately with greatsword #2 (mirror blade)
- At this point you'll have a clone and a phantasm hopefully keeping the mob away from you (greatsword does more damage at range)
- Use greatsword #3 (small aoe)
- Swap to your staff (!!!!)
- Use staff #3 (warlock)
- Use staff #5 (chaos storm)

Now at this point you have 2-3 illusions alive, and some aoe raining down on your enemy. If you've drop below 3 illusions, use staff #2 (phase retreat) to get a third out there - if you're feeling particularly fancy, run into the chaos storm and then phase retreat from within its radius to get free chaos armor.

Once your weapon swap cooldown is done, blow up your clones (mind wrack- F1 - is your best option if its available) and then switch back to greatsword and repeat the whole cycle.

As you level up if you want to pursue a shatter build (here's mine) the only thing that will change is that you'll be able to shatter earlier and more often because your illusion summoning skills will refresh much faster.

As for me, I'm still playing what was my leveling build: GS+scepter/focus

GS is my bread and butter, focus for temporal curtain. (scepter doesn't really matter, just wanted a ranged mainhand to go with the focus but i rarely use it).

For Traits: up to lvl39 I went first 5 in Illusions, next 5 in Chaos, then 10 in Inspiration, and finally brought the last two of those up to 10 as well. those were the 3 lines in which the first minor and major traits felt like they had a bigger impact on my survivability and effectiveness without being too heavily tied to a specific play-style.

lvl40-59: after the book reset i went 20 into Domination to get the GS major trait, and then repeated the same progression as before with the exception of capping Illusions at 5 and putting those extra points in Inspiration.

60+: same as above, setting Dom at 20, Chaos at 15, Illusions at 5 and Inspiration at 10, with the last 20 points after that going into inspiration.

To respond to the levelling concerns and add a bit to what Grandma just posted.

Levelling from 15 to 30-40 with the mesmer was pretty rough. You really need to start going deep into traits for the class to start shining.

My advice for the early levels is to put a decent amount into inspiration/chaos until you get to level 20. Then when you have 10pts available put 10 into the dueling line and get "Blade Training" (+50 precision while wielding a one-handed sword or a spear. Reduces the recharge of sword and spear skills by 20%.) The Sword #2 attack will give you a few seconds of invulnerability every 8 seconds. I used sword/focus + Greatsword or staff. If you solo a lot I wouldnt recommend going with both ranged weapons.

Sword focus gives you decent damage, survivability, and running. GS gives you the berserker, clones, and something to do at range. Staff is decent too, the illusory warlock does pretty impressive damage.

As for utility slots, I would go with feedback and decoy/blink.

Once you hit 40 you can hit some of the tier 2 traits or enough tier 1 traits to make really decent builds and levelling shouldn't be a problem after that.

Biggest difference is that mesmers aren't really that good for soloing events early on so the best thing you could do is find 1-2 players in any given zone and tag along as they do events.

I'm glad I went with mesmer as my second character to get to 80. Leveling up seemed pretty gear dependent to me. Every 5-10 levels I had to hit the trading post to upgrade weapons and/or armor to keep me from dying all the time. I ended up with a shatter build with GS and Staff, and I love using it now fully leveled. I love using the trait that makes a clone when I dodge- with that and my skills I have a constant supply of clones to shatter as I feel like it.

I'm glad I went with mesmer as my second character to get to 80. Leveling up seemed pretty gear dependent to me. Every 5-10 levels I had to hit the trading post to upgrade weapons and/or armor to keep me from dying all the time. I ended up with a shatter build with GS and Staff, and I love using it now fully leveled. I love using the trait that makes a clone when I dodge- with that and my skills I have a constant supply of clones to shatter as I feel like it.

Yeah and it gets pretty nutty with the signet of inspiration how much you can support the team even if you're specced for damage.

Spectral Grasp - Pulls an enemy towards you (like Thieves' scorpion wire) and applies chill, knocking the opponent down. The pull is not as reliable as I would like but overall I am satisfied with it in this build.

Reaper of Grenth - A very situational eilite under most circumstances, it fits well with the concept of the build, chill and keep the enemy close. I usually trigger it about 2/3 of the way through a fight, when the enemy is close and down enough to try to get in a first heal, allowing poision to decrease their heal's effectiveness, and chill to keep them close and delay the things they have on CD. I might pick Lich Form if I was not a human.

As for traits, 30 Spite does not only add to power but increases my any condition's duration by 30% (so I have a total of +50% on Chill when Combined with my Superior Runes of Ice). Most Spite traits (II and X) are to make chilling easier.

My other trait choices are to increase survivability. I will post later on my PvE build.

"Manure seems to be the most effective means of assassination."--Deadmonkeys

My mesmer will hit 80 tonight and after that, I intend to keep it as my main WvW character. I'm using Greatsword and Sword/Focus as my weapon set, traited as follows:

I'm looking for suggestions for equipment/runes/sigils. I've dabbled in WvW, but not quite sure whether I'm best off with toughness/vitality or precision/critical and some kind of rune that feeds off of it.

I have about 50 jugs of karma I can spend but not nearly as much gold, so if I can get a karma set that would be ideal. Otherwise, I can work on building my set piece by piece.

Right now I'm going back and forth between leveling a warrior and an elementalist. My current plan for the elementalist is to use signets and the written in stone trait which keeps the passive bonuses even when you've activated the signet. That requires 30 in Earth. Right now I'm looking at doing 20/0/30/20/0, but I'm just over level 20 so that may change as I get more experience with the character. I haven't settled on a weapon set yet. Was using scepter/dagger, currently using staff. Tried dagger/dagger, but I'm not sure if I was using the skill combos to its fullest. I'd love to hear others thoughts on their ele builds too.

As for warrior, I'm currently liking the hammer for interrupts and longbow for range. This one is in its teens, so no well thought out plans for the build. Again, I'd love to hear others thoughts on thier builds. I am finding the lack of speed boost for the warrior disheartening- anyone have a solution for that?

I'm kind of a fan of Centaur runes for mesmer, it'll give you some much needed swiftness. It has absolutely saved my life when running away, and the in combat mobility is nice. It's relatively easy on the wallet at ~40-50s a piece

Gosh, I didn't even know we had a specific thread for class and builds discussion!! Tagging for future reference and future questions.
And forgive me for posting in the wrong thread, previously (I'd posted in the catch all instead of here).

I'm kind of a fan of Centaur runes for mesmer, it'll give you some much needed swiftness. It has absolutely saved my life when running away, and the in combat mobility is nice. It's relatively easy on the wallet at ~40-50s a piece

My engie is wearing 7/6 of Centaur runes, and I love it (the 7th rune is for the rebreather so you get swiftness underwater). I'm equipping 3 different kits, so having a speed boost tied to my healing skill that's on a 25 second cool down is great. And the fact that it also grants swiftness to nearby allies is a cool bonus.

Question for the guardian experts: due to the time of day I play, I find myself playing solo quite a bit. I'm stuck in my mid-50s and find myself bored stiff using judge's intervention and great sword. Does anyone have a good leveling build that will help me speed up the grind? Also, are there any other good weapon combos that will slice through mobs as quickly as great sword? I've heard good things about sword and torch, but I've also heard it got nerfed.

This is Khyli. She's posing with her greatsword pretending to be a super-tough Charr berzerk warrior, but in reality she spends most of her time in WvW acting as mobile artillery with longbow and sword/warhorn.

Note that she still has Masterwork earings. I'm considering going for exotic valkyrie earings with ruby slotted for a little bit of extra health whilst retaining crit damage.

The way I tend to play this is as part of a zerg or smaller raiding party, supporting the front-line fighters with fire fields and blast finishers. It's a squishy build by WvW standards, but not being in the front line means survivability is okay, and she's fairly mobile with stun breaks and condition removal. Damage potential is decent, and she gets a good number of kills, and seems to makes a useful contribution to most fights. I've found using the longbow burst as an area denial helps to push back an opposing group (it's not a fun thing to stand in), blast it for area might, and you can throw it up on walls and such to suppress defenders, or just to help finish clusters of downed enemies. Traits are such that adrenaline gain is rapid and burst skills refresh more quickly.

If I know I'll be defending heavily, I'll go rifle/longbow and switch some traits to crack shot/leg specialist (thanks GrandmaFunk!).

I'm posting this up because I'd value some input, especially from other warrior players or those of you who WvW regularly. In particular:

(1) At the moment I'm running 6x ruby orbs, because they give a great stat boost for their cost. I'm considering scholar runes (I notice I often keep 90% health for a while in a fight, until I get targetted) or going with Pack or Centaur for the swiftness duration. I don't want to gimp damage too much, though. I ruled out Lyssa because I pop my elite early in a fight for the might stacks and boost to crit chance.

(2) This is specced purely for direct damage, as I felt condition damage might be less useful given that most in WvW run with condition removers. Would it be worth boosting condition damage?

(3) Buffs: I was using lifesteal food, but not sure how much it helps now that there is the internal cooldown?

I'm not proud, and welcome any input
(It's also fair to note that part of the reason I'm sticking to ranged is that my PC is old and can lag adversely in the middle of big fights).

Question for the guardian experts: due to the time of day I play, I find myself playing solo quite a bit. I'm stuck in my mid-50s and find myself bored stiff using judge's intervention and great sword. Does anyone have a good leveling build that will help me speed up the grind? Also, are there any other good weapon combos that will slice through mobs as quickly as great sword? I've heard good things about sword and torch, but I've also heard it got nerfed.

Sword can be good if you have decent crit chance, I prefer focus as an off-hand for the blind and shield. A lot of builds tend to centre on Altruistic Healing or Monk's Focus in the Valor line, but as these are Grandmaster traits they won't be available to you yet. I seem to recall AndrewA posted a sword/torch build for Guardian.

When I was levelling I traited into Radiance and Honor (plus 10 in either Zeal or Virtues), spamming Virtue of Justice and waving around ... yes, a greatsword.

I have been having a blast leveling up my 15 elementalist with dagger/focus and fire attunement. I was blazing through 10-15 in a short few hours.

The #3 dagger fire skill (leap forward and explode where you land) is a lot of fun when mixed with the #2 fire breath skill for significant aoe fire burning. In a lot of situations I find myself seeking groups without care of dying because I know that I will rally almost immediately.

I am going +power with traits. I have earth, and fire signets but only really use the fire signet when I am acquiring other attunement skills. I am also using the healing attunement that heals a small amount on hit.

I have been meaning to check out dagger/dagger but have been having a blast with dagger/focus that I haven't bothered.